How do you like your purple?

 

Purple prose.

 

 It might not bear the hallmarks of the more emphatically debated topics, but it’s there nonetheless and almost everyone I’ve talked to has an opinion on it.  It can be a tool or a death sentence to a story.

 

The consensus seems to fall into three categories:

Camp one says that it’s a writing style filled with useless words that aren’t important to the crux of the tale being told and can be quite distracting. Such readers prefer to have lots of room for interpretation.

She smiled, enjoying the sun and watching the leaves blow around.

Camp two indicates that they prefer a middle ground-enough detail to describe an environment and a character’s physical sensations without creating a gauntlet the reader is forced to endure.

She smiled as the sun’s warmth shone down on her shoulders in between

 the scattered clouds being tossed about on the breeze.

 

Camp three says that they enjoy the enhanced details and that it greatly enhances their reading experience, giving them an intricate and detailed view of what the author had in mind.

 

She smiled as the heated tendrils of light flowed down, her shoulders soaking

up the heat with a rapturous joy.  Scattered clouds moved languidly, occasionally

passing over her, denying her warmth, and causing her shiver.  A breeze blew

softly around her, pushing the offending darkness away, restoring the connection

between life, light, and skin.

 

 I am the first one to admit I tend to favor the visceral side of things, and that it gives more insight to the workings of my characters’ minds.

 

I was actually doing a bit of research on purple prose since it is something I deal with almost daily.  It's automatic with me.  It could be worse....

"In Defense of Purple Prose, " an  online article from the New York Times, Paul West writes:

             "Of course, purple is not only highly colored prose. It is the world written

up, intensifies and made pleasurably palpable, not only to suggest the

 impetuous abundance of Creation, but also to add to it by

showing - showing off - the expansive power of the mind itself, its unique

knack for making itself at home among trees, dawn, viruses, and then

turning them into something else: a word, a daub, a sonata. The impulse

here is to make everything larger than life, almost to overrespond, maybe

 because, habituated to life written down, in both senses, we become inured

and have to be awakened with something almost intolerably vivid. When

 the deep purple blooms, you are looking at a dimension, not a posy. "

            (http://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/15/books/in-defense-of-purple-prose.html)

Combining cerebral with visceral has been a challenge to be sure.  My past writing style was one that was written such a  cerebral that it required extra purple so that the reader would not become lost.

 

A few readers really got it and went out of their way to tell me how much they liked it, while the majority ended up confused and not getting the story at all. Looking back I can’t help but cringe a bit. (Okay I cringe a lot).

 

 I think many writers aim for balance. I prefer to walk a bit left of that. A touch of unbalance makes my world go ‘round.  

 

Wishing you a purple day,

 

 ~Robyn

 

 

(Note: This is an entry from a blog long ago, that has been reworked and updated as it's still very applicable for me today. It was too good to waste and there are a couple I will be reworking and posting in the coming months. I will note them as such.)